L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Indians
in Canada

[This
text was written A. G. Bailey in 1948. Bailey was an eminent ethnologist-historian.
For the full citation, see the end of the text.]

The
aboriginal inhabitants of Canada
were what are now known as "Indians" - a misnomer which was
due to the mistaken belief of Columbus
that he had in 1492 reached the Asiatic Indies rather than the West
Indies. How long the Indians had been in America
before the coming of Europeans is a matter
of conjecture. Attempts have been made to prove that man reached America
in inter-glacial times, since supposed traces
of his occupation, such as worked flints and other remains, have been
found in American inter­glacial deposits. There is no doubt that
the American mastodons of inter-glacial times must have come from Asia
by way of the land connection which once
existed between Siberia
and Alaska; and
if mastodons came, man may have come also. On the other hand, no conclusive
proof of the existence of man in America
before the last glacial period has yet been found; and it is clear that,
during this glacial period, man could not have existed in the northern
part of the continent which now constitutes Canada
.

From
the time of the arrival of the first Europeans in America
to the present, the origin of the Indians has
been the subject of many speculations. The theory of Cotton Mather,
a famous New England divine
of the seventeenth century, was that they were an accursed race which
the devil had inveigled to America
to remove them, 'beyond the tinkle of the gospel bells.' Other writers
have maintained that they were the descendants of the lost tribes of
Israel . More recently it
was believed that the Indians were not the aboriginal inhabitants of
America , but that they
had been preceded by a race known as "the Mound Builders,"
who had built mounds found in many parts of America,
typically in the Ohio valley.
It is now known, however, that these mounds were built by the Indians
themselves, and not by any prior race. The theory now held most widely
by anthropologists is that the Indians were not indigenous to America,
but that they emigrated from Asia.
With the melting of the glaciers and the gradual retreat of the ire
that marked the close of the Pleistocene age, bands of nomads must have
pushed their way into north-eastern Asia
in their constant search for new areas in which the food resources had
not been depleted. At Bering strait,
Asia and America
are separated by only fifty miles of water, and
it must have been by this means that the greatest flood of immigration
into Amer­ica took
place. The coast of Alaska
is discernible on clear days from the Asiatic side, and natives to-day
make their way in boats from one coast to the other, making use of the
Diomede islands which lie
midway between the two continents. It is probable that the migration
continued for many thousands of years, since the Indians, lacking wheeled
vehicles and beasts of burden, moved slowly. Moreover, because of the
high development which was reached by the autochthonous cultures of
cen­tral America, and because of the great diversity of linguistic
stocks in aboriginal America,
fifty-six occurring north of Mexico
alone, and for kindred reasons, some writers have concluded that the
migration to America began
not less than fifteen thousand years ago. On the other hand, others
would ascribe a much more recent date to the first migration of man
into the western hemisphere.

Other
theories tend to supplement rather than displace the Bering strait theory.
For many years scientists toyed with the idea of a lost continent of
Atlantis which might have served as a stepping-stone from Africa to
America, but it is more probable that Atlantis had . no existence outside
of classical legend. Some writers, however, believe that the [Black
Africans] made frequent voyages to America in ancient times, although
the American Indians appear to reveal no traces of mixture with that
stock. Others again hold that the civilizations of central America were
derived from Egypt by means of trans-Pacific contacts, so similar were
they in several respects. According to another theory, many parallels
exist between the grammatical structure of the Melanesian languages
of the East Indies and that of the Rokan group in California. These
parallels have been cited in support of the theory of trans-Pacific
contacts between the Old World and the New. Another group of scientists,
approaching the problem from a different angle, have claimed to discover
certain similarities between the Melanesian type of skull and that type
found in parts of America, notably at Lagoa Santa in Brazil, and in
southern California . Some have attempted to explain these American
and Asiatic similarities by asserting that a vast archipelago once stretched
across the southern Pacific, bridging the gap between, the two continents.
It is said that Easter island, the closest of the Polynesian group to
the American coast, is a remnant of this once large and populous archipelago,
which was inhabited by a people who built the large monolithic statues
still to be seen on the island. Other students of the subject maintain
that this archipelago never existed, since in their opinion the ocean
floor is slowly rising rather than falling. But it is not difficult
to assume, even under existing geological conditions; that Asiatic peoples
may have reached America by way of the Pacific, when it is remembered
that the Polynesians sometimes made ocean voyages of over a thousand
miles in open boats, and that, two thousand years ago, some adventurous
Malay groups are said to have made their way across the Indian ocean.
to Madagascar .

However
plausible many of these theories may be, it is certain that the American
aborigines are closely akin in their physical features to the Mongoloid
peoples of north-eastern Asia .
Many of their cultural characteristics display a marked similarity,
and the languages of some of the. Indian groups, such as the Athapaskan
and the [Inuit], are in certain respects not unlike Tibetan, Turkish,
Magyar, and Finnish. It used to be thought that the [Inuit], who inhabit
the northern fringe of the American continent, and who were found in
historical times as far south as the gulf of St. Lawrence, were a race
quite distinct from the Indians. But recent investigations have established
the fact that they too are largely of Mongoloid stock and not sharply
distinct from many of the neighbouring Indian groups. It is thought
that the [Inuit] and the Athapaskan of the North-West Territories represent
recent migrations from Asia; whereas the Siouans of the Plains, and
the Iroquoians and Algonkians of the eastern woodland areas, were perhaps
among the earliest peoples to enter America.

During
the many thousands of years which elapsed between the first coming of
the Indians to America
and the arrival of the Europeans, the Indians achieved in some parts
of America a considerable
civilization. The Peruvians, the Mayas, the Toltecs, and the Aztecs,
of South and Central America,
constructed magnificent stone buildings; they acquired the art of working
the softer metals; they made elaborate and artistic pottery; they developed
agriculture to a relatively high level; and they knew something of astronomy
and surgery. But unlike the western European peoples who were closely
connected by trade routes with Africa and Asia, the American aborigines
were isolated in the western hemisphere from those important discoveries
and inventions which permit a very high degree of civilization. They
had no knowledge of the wheel and its uses; they did not learn how to
make tools and weapons of iron and steel; fire-arms and paper were unknown
to them; and they never acquired, save in a very elementary way, the
art of writing. As for the Indians of Canada, the material aspects of
their culture were still relatively simple when the first white men
reached America
in the sixteenth century. Their clothing was made of the skins of animals,
sometimes ornamented with beads or porcupine-quill designs; and feathers
were sometimes worn on the head by persons of a certain status for ceremonial
and other purposes. They had no metal implements, but used stone hatchets,
gouges, chisels, and scrapers, and stone and flint spear and arrow heads,
together with other tools and utensils of bone, wood, bark, and antler.
Some peoples, such as the Ojibwa and the Indians of southern British
Columbia, made excellent baskets, but pottery
was generally made from thick clay, crudely when compared with the higher
developments of the Old World .
All the Indians lived on fruit, nuts, fish, and game animals which the
country afforded. Some, such as the Iroquoian peoples, cultivated corn,
or maize, beans, pumpkins, and squash extensively, the seeds of which
they planted in clearings in the forest. Wild d rice was an important
food among the Ojibwa of the Great lakes .
The dwellings of the Indians varied from the permanent houses of solid
lumber on the Pacific coast, the bark longhouse of the Iroquois, and
the snow but of the [Inuit], to the conical skin tipi of the Plains
and the dome-shaped bark lodge of the Montagnais. It was in the realm
of transportation that they excelled. Their most important invention,
when considered in the light of colonial history, was the birch-bark
canoe, in which they travelled far and wide over the natural waterways
of the country. They also invented the snowshoe, which enabled them
to travel over the deep snow in winter.

The
clan system of society prevailed among such peoples as the Iroquois
and the Pacific coast Indians; but whereas the Iroquois were essentially
democratic, the Pacific coast tribes knew nobles, commoners, and slaves.
In the league of the Five Nations, the Iroquois attained a more efficient
political organization than the nations of western Europe have ever
been able to achieve. Other Indians, such as those of Athapaskan and
Algonkian stock, wandered about their territories in small bands of
closely related families, and were generally without any clan organization.
Polygamy was not uncommon among most of the Indian peoples. All possessed
rich mythologies, and the curative properties of herbs were well-known.
Their art was generally confined to bead, porcupine-quill, or moose-hair
embroidery, painting, and wood-carving. The totem pole art of the Pacific
coast attained its greatest development under European stimulus in the
nineteenth century. A considerable variety of religious beliefs prevailed
among the Indians. In general it may be said that they personified the
mysterious forces of nature which they sought to placate or control
in order to ensure abundant food, general well-being, and to avert disasters:
The next world was conceived of as an idealized replica of this. The
"Great Spirit" and the "Happy Hunting Ground" were
largely the imputation of Europeans.

At
the time of European discovery, the Indians of Canada numbered about
220,000, whereas to-day there are about half that number. Linguistically,
they were divided into eleven distinct stocks; six of which were confined
to British Columbia
alone. The most widely distributed were the Algonkian which included
among others, the Micmac , Abnaki, Montagnais, Ojibwa, Cree, and Blackfoot;
the Iroquoian, which included also the Hurons anti the Neutrals; the
Siouan, which was spoken by the Assiniboin; Athapaskan, which was the
language of the Chipewyans, Slaves, Yellowknives, and others; and the
[Inuit]. Notable among those of British Columbia
were the Salish, Haida; and Tsimshian.

The
French Period.

When John Cabot sailed into the gulf waters of the St. Lawrence in 1497;
he opened the period of contact with the Indians which has lasted to
our own day, although it has been claimed, without complete authenticity,
that the Basques, Bretons, and Normans
preceded not only Cabot, but Columbus. The Norse voyages of the tenth
century appear to have left no mark upon the cultures of the Indians
in Canada. From 1504, the year of the first authentic French voyage,
to 1534, when Cartier skirted the coasts of the gulf : of St. Lawrence,
intermittent but not infrequent contacts were made by the fishermen
with the eastern Indian bands. In 1535 Cartier encountered on the banks
of the St. Lawrence a people of Iroquoian stock who have been variously
supposed to lie Mohawks, Onondagas, Hurons, or a related people who
were later destroyed by the Five Nations Iroquois. When Champlain arrived
at the St. Lawrence in 1603, they had disappeared. Some writers, believe
that they themselves were representatives of the Five Nations and that
they were driven out of the St. Lawrence valley by hostile Algonkians.
The removal of these Iroquoians from the St. Lawrence enabled the French
to found colonies from which they could prosecute the fur-trade, an
industry which assumed great importance at the beginning of the seventeenth
century. Beaver, the fur which was most highly prized by the Europeans,
rapidly became depleted in the areas inhabited by the Indians who were
nearest the French, with the result that these Indians became intermediaries
in the trade between the French and more remote peoples. The position
of these intermediaries was made precarious by the Iroquois who hoped
to secure the fur-trade to the Dutch, and later to the English, rather
than to the hostile French. With this purpose in view, they .had all
but destroyed the Algonkian and Huron allies of the French. by the middle
of the seventeenth century. Other forces were at work which tended to
deplete the ranks of the Indians, not only those who were allied to
the French, but the Iroquois themselves. These were the disrupting influences
of European civilization.

The
native crafts in stone, wood, and other materials were disrupted by
the introduction of European iron and copper ware, particularly by the
axe and the kettle. As the household arts had occupied so much of their
time, the Indians were now committed to a life of enforced idleness,
and lingered about the trading-posts when they were not hunting for
furs. Trade and war became the major occupations of the men. War waged
with European weapons rendered the death rate high, and left many women
without mates among their own kind. This in turn encouraged miscegenation
with -the European traders, which facilitated the spread of such diseases
as syphilis, smallpox, tuberculosis, and measles; diseases probably
unknown among the Indians prior to the coming of the Europeans. Moreover,
their constitutions were weakened by the excessive drinking of spirituous
liquors, which was encouraged by the traders, and by the consumption
of European foods, which were often in a corrupt condition when they
reached the Indians. European clothing and dwellings were not generally
conducive to health among the Indians. In the face of these adverse
factors, the Indians became melancholy, and when to these factors
were added those of a social nature, many suffered a loss of the will
to live. Notable among the social factors was the attempt of the missionaries
to suppress the sex life of the natives. Polygamy survived in the areas
remote from settlement, and among the agricultural Indians the clan
organization tended to break down. Some adapted themselves by sublimating
the sexual into the religious emotions; others, failing this, had recourse
to flagellation; still others reverted to their pristine way of life,
or found their outlet through activities of a perverted nature. The
despondency was increased by the disintegration of the group life resulting
from the clash of political and judicial systems, which instilled in
the Indians a lack of faith in their own systems and in themselves.
Tribe after tribe, as it was reached by the tentacles of the ubiquitous
fur-trade, succumbed to these influences. The most easterly Indians,
who were first encountered by the Europeans, and whose territories fell
within the areas of maximum settlement, sank rapidly to the status of
"poor-white", or had by the middle of the seventeenth century
taken refuge in remote places. Few of the Indians during the French
period fully relinquished their old beliefs in favour of Christianity,
since the latter contained many conceptions, such as that of individual
salvation, which were foreign to the notions of the Indians After the
destruction of the Hurons by the Iroquois in 1649, the trade route between
the French and the source of furs in the interior remained broken until
contacts were made with the Ottawa and other central Algonkian peoples.
Not only did the English and the Iroquois cut into the French fur trade
on the Great lakes, but the English had by 1668 found a short sea-route
to the fur-bearing interior by way of Hudson bay which seriously menaced
French interests; and, although the French began in 1670 to send counter
expeditions, they never entirely succeeded in winning the allegiance
of the Cree, an Algonkian-speaking people, who inhabited the shores
of Hudson bay. Thus the French were attacked on both flanks. Nevertheless,
their trade expanded rapidly after 1663 and affected the Ottawa, dispersed
Hurons, and Saulteaux, on the southern shore of lake Superior. Green
Bay on lake. Michigan became a rallying point for many Algonkian and
some Siouan peoples. All these peoples became in a greater or lesser
degree subjected to the disintegrating forces of civilization outlined
above, and in consequence depopulation was relatively great.

After
the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the forts on Hudson bay which had been
wrested from the English by the French were returned to their former
owners, arid the French were again faced with keen competition in the
fur-trade. In order to meet this competition, the French were forced
to expand their organization into the prairie country, and to establish
forts in the lake Winnipeg district to prevent the Indians from going
to Hudson bay. This movement brought the western Cree and Assiniboin
within the sphere of European influence, sharpening their wars with
their Siouan competitors, spreading drunkenness and disease among them,
and making them dependent for their survival upon articles and goods
of European manufacture. At the same time the eastern Indians; such
as, the Iroquois. and the Algonkian peoples, became involved in the
struggle between England and France for the control of the continent.
A division in the allegiance of the Five Nations Iroquois split the
confederacy and resulted in the migration of large numbers to the vicinity
of Montreal. The French were unable to prevent the encroachment of large
numbers of English farmers into their fur-trading area on the Ohio,
and the doom of the Indians of this area was sealed with the cession
of Canada to the English in 1763.

The
British Period, 1763-1830 .

In
colonial times each English colony had dealt independently with the
Indians, but with the example of the successful Indian policy of the
French before them, the British military authorities were constrained
to appoint Sir William Johnson to deal with the Iroquois and other northern
tribes. This policy was continued after the cession of Canada in 1763.
The Indians were to be regarded as independent nations under the protection
of the Crown, which, while recognizing their absolute political independence
and their actual ownership of their lands, claimed for itself an option
on the purchase of these lands. Although no foreign state might buy,
the occasion sometimes arose whereby subjects of the Crown encroached
upon the domains of the Indians, as in the case of the Brantford reservation
of the Iroquois in the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, after
the cession of Canada to the British, farmers pushed across the Ohio
into the "Old North West" and established themselves on the
hunting territories of the Seneca, Huron, and central Algonkian peoples.
Treaty presents decreased in value, and the British officers who now
occupied the posts accorded less dignity to the chiefs in political
conferences than had been the custom of the French. Pontiac, chief of
the Ottawa, believing that the French would again return to power in
America, tried to get the tribes to abolish war among themselves and
to turn their united energies against the English. Because, however,
of an intrigue at Detroit, Pontiac failed to capture that strategic
post, and his eventual failure was due to the fact that the various
tribes would not stand together against the English.

The
situation of the tribes in the "Old North West" was radically
altered by the American War of Independence, after which this territory
was ceded to the United States. The British, however, perhaps less because
of pressure from their own fur-trading interests than of fear of trouble
from the Indians, to whom the trade was still essential, retained their
posts until 1796. Tecumseh, a chief of the Shawnese, began about this
time to organize the tribes in a further attempt to oust the American
farmers from the area between the Ohio river and the Great lakes. During
the War of 1812 he was defeated by the American forces at the battle
of Tippecanoe. This was the last attempt of the Indians of the "Old
North West" to regain their status as hunters and traders. From
that time onward, with the influx of white settlers, they were segregated
on reservations, and as a consequence of so-called civilizing processes
they suffered considerable degradation and tended to shrink in numbers.
Some, such as the Iroquois whose territories lay both in Canada and
the United States, retained the right to cross the international boundary
at will.

While
wars, migrations, and settlement, were radically altering the status
of the Indians in the eastern woodland, the fur-trade continued to expand
in the territories west of Hudson bay, and had, by the last decades
of the eighteenth century, brought most of the Athapaskan peoples within
the sphere of European influence. The rivalry between the North West
Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, which had developed after the
British conquest in 1763, in some respects favoured and in others injured
the position of the western Indians with respect to the advantages to
be secured by trade. The situation was altered by the amalgamation of
the companies in 1821, and the general position of the Indians with
respect. to the company was one of debt peonage after that date, since
they could no longer trade on the jealousy of the rival companies. Smallpox
had spread to the Indians of the Canadian West in 1738, and David Thompson,
a promin­ent fur-trader, noticed its ravages among the Cree in 1781.
Disease, drunkenness, and social disruption played the same devastating
part which was to be observed among the eastern Indians at an earlier
period. Moreover, settlement began with the establishment of Lord Selkirk's
colony on the Red river, and the old story of Pontiac and Tecumseh was
re-enacted in the [Métis] risings under Louis Riel, which are
known in Canadian history as the North West Rebellions.

The
acquisition of horses and firearms by the Plains Indians rapidly transformed
their economic and political life, making them powerful and swift­moving
warriors and hunters. In the latter sphere they attained to such proficiency
that they seriously diminished their food-supply, which consisted largely
of buffalo meat. Some of the British Columbian tribes also became expert
horsemen, and have, up to the present time, been successful ranch­ers,
whereas others, such as the Salish and Carrier bands of the interior,
have failed to adapt themselves to an agricultural existence, and in
consequence have declined rapidly. Of all the Canadian aborigines, the
[Inuit] have resisted best the degradation inherent in the spread of
European civilization, partly on account of their isolated position
and partly on account of their great resourcefulness, although they
too, have suffered depletion by the spread of disease.

The
Canadian Period, 1830-.

In
1830 the administration of Indian affairs was transferred from the British
military authorities to the provincial government. Not long afterwards
Upper and Lower Canada began a systematic endeavour to educate the Indians,
with the cooperation of the missionaries as to finances and system.
It is claimed that their methods have been successful. and that many
of the Indians are adapting themselves to the ways of modern Canadian
life, although it is probable that all of these contained much white
blood in their veins. Shortly after Confederation, the Dominion gov­ernment
extinguished the aboriginal title to the vast areas east of the Rocky
mountains by annual gifts of cash, to­gether with promises of assistance
in agriculture and education, and the reservation system was extended
to the Plans. In British Columbia no attempt to extinguish the Indian
title has been made, but the provincial government has set aside reserves,
and the Dominion government has followed the same policy there as on
the prairies. The coastal Indians are an important labour factor in
the fisheries of the Eraser and Skeena rivers. Both the western and
eastern Indians have benefitted from the medical service extended to
them by the Department of Indian Affairs, but in spite of this they
have declined considerably and their future is un­certain. Doubtless
all tribes will eventually disappear. The period of their greatest influence
upon European civilization was probably in the seventeenth century.
As one eminent authority has said, "Culturally they have already
contributed everything that was valuable for our civilization beyond
what knowledge we may still glean from their histories concerning man's
ceaseless struggle to control his environment."

Bibliography.

The
most complete and authoritative work on the Canadian Indians to date
is D. Jenness, The Indians of Canada (Ottawa, 1932).
This book contains detailed information upon their origin and prehistoric
migrations, upon all aspects of their culture, and upon their interactions
with the white race. The bulk of the material on the French period is
contained in the seventy-three volumes of The Jesuit Relations and
allied documents, edited by R. G. Thwaites, and in the Champlain
Society publications of the works of Champlain, Lescarbot, Denys, Dièreville,
and LeClercq. Additional material may be found in the Grand voyage
au pays des Hurons of Sagard-Theodat, and in the Voyages of
the Baron Lahontan, edited by R. G. Thwaites. Printed sources on
the British period are less full, but much information may be gleaned
from the chapters on Pontiac and Tecumseh in The American Indian
frontier by W. C. MacLeod, in F. Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac,
and in the biographies of Pontiac, Joseph Brant, and Tecumseh,
in the Chronicles of Canada series. The fur-trade of this
and all other periods is covered thoroughly in H. A. Innis, The
fur trade in Canada (New Haven, 1930). De Smet's Life, letters,
and travels (New York, 1905) is a valuable source of information
on the Plains Indians; the articles of A. C. Parker, scattered through
the volumes of the American Anthropologist, are authoritative
with respect to the Iroquois, as are those of F. G. Speck on the Algonkians
in the same publication. The works of Catlin and Petitot contain many
points of interest not to be found elsewhere, and an article by D. C.
Scott in The book of Canada, published by the Canadian Medical
Association in 1930, gives an outline of the Department of Indian Affairs
in recent years. In 1915 the Manual of the Indians of Canada, under
the editorship of J. White, was published as a supplement to the annual
report of the Department of Marine and Fisheries. It is a full reference
work, published in dictionary form, and is a reproduction of much of
the information contained in Bulletin 30 of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
Smithsonian Institution.